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We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist reports
that a newly study commissioned by the Government of Canada, which
includes some of
the most extensive surveying to date of the Canadian population on
music purchasing habits, finds what many have long suspected — there is a positive correlation between
peer-to-peer downloading and CD purchasing. The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P
File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study For Industry Canada
was conducted collaboratively by two professors from the University of
London, Industry Canada, and Decima Research, who surveyed over 2,000
Canadians on their music downloading and purchasing habits."

Stanislav_J (947290) writes "A Swedish man who had less than fond feelings for his daughter's hubby, took advantage of the son-in-law's trip to America by reporting him to the FBI as a terrorist. The e-mail, which the father-in-law admits to sending, earned him a libel charge after his poor son-in-law was arrested on his arrival in Florida, handcuffed, interrogated, and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being released.

It's a brief article, but dovetails nicely with the recent Slashdot story about "The War on the Unexpected." That article touched on many examples of well-meaning, but misguided and paranoid citizens reporting innocent activities to the authorities. In the current climate, the potential also exists for maliciously false and far from well-meaning reports made to the Feds about people one simply doesn't care for, or those made merely as a sick prank.

While the man admitted to sending the e-mail to the FBI, he claims he thought no harm would come from it because "he did not think the US authorities would be stupid enough to believe him." To quote the great philosopher Bugs Bunny, 'Nyahh....he don't know us very well, do he?'"

ajanp (1083247) writes "Computerworld discusses the defeat of legislation in the states of California, Florida, Texas, Oregon, and Connecticut which "would have required state agencies to use freely available and interoperable file formats, such as the Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications, instead of Microsoft Corp.'s proprietary Office formats," although a bill in Minnesota that would have called for the state agencies to start using an open, XML-based format was changed to instead study the issue.
There was heavy lobbying being done in private on both sides with one problem being "the jargon-laden disinformation that committee members felt they were being fed by lobbyists for both IBM and Microsoft. Although lobbyists would tell the committee one thing in private, they got cold feet when asked to verify the information publicly, under oath."
However, "Despite the string of defeats, Marino Marcich, executive director of the Washington-based ODF Alliance, said the legislative fight has only begun.""Link to Original Source

lisah writes "While some people are still trying to figure out how to apply the slightly enigmatic Pipes mash up tool to their daily lives, programmers, developers, website owners, and bloggers are coming up with new and wildly creative uses every day. Pipes creator Pasha Sadri says he's amazed at the brilliant ideas people have dreamed up so far but he's really looking forward to seeing what folks with a little programming experience can create and will welcome their feedback as Yahoo! continues to develop new ways to implement and improve Pipes. From the article, "'We encourage developers regardless of their programming expertise to try out Pipes,' he says. 'We look forward to tech-savvy users providing feedback to help as we expand the functionality of Pipes. The opportunities for Pipes are endless and we are planning to enable more complex applications in the near future.'""

chipster123 (1067170) writes "'Once again life imitates Woody Allen's Sleeper'
There is an article over at TreeHugger.com about a new switchable glass that 'scientists estimate that having buildings in mirror mode could save up to 30% on air conditioning, and we can design buildings like it's 1975 again'."

The Constitution specifically forbids any direct tax on wages and salaries,
and the Supreme Courts consistently ruled in the same way.
Not a single dollar of income taxes is used, as widely believed, to offer and sustain
public services.

It was an interesting video to watch, and btw I am not an US citizen,
have no affiliation with any of the authors or organizations cited or whatever."

MattSparkes writes "French researchers have discovered a new way to create super-hydrophobic surfaces, which could make completely electronic control of water possible. This could replace messy pumps and valves. By passing a voltage across a water droplet on the surface, it's shape can be deformed, and when the voltage is removed, it springs back into shape. Although the distortion is small, it should be enough to push droplets around by controlling the voltage between many different surface electrodes."

DRMwatch (666) writes "While Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, said that given the choice, he'd drop DRM in a heart beat; the producers behind the silicon valley documentary, In Search of the Valley, have done just that, thanks to a next-generation download service. The documentary follows three friends' pilgrimage, where against the odds, they gained access to the founders of some of the Valley's most important companies, including Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak; Adobe co-founder, John Warnock; Macromedia co-founder, Marc Canter; Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media and Craig Newmark of Craigslist."

zakkie writes "New Zealand fisherman have caught a massive 450 kg colossal squid fishing in the Antartic waters. This is by far the biggest yet found, measuring over 10 metres in length and weighing 450 kg. It has been taken back to New Zealand to be studied."

MattSparkes writes "The Mars rover Spirit used to get quite confused when it came upon a rock. Because it could only plan routes of a metre or two it couldn't understand how to navigate around large objects, and frequently used to rock back and forth for hours trying to figure it out. NASA have written new software called D* for the rover Opportunity, which should allow it to autonomously plan routes up to 50 metres long. The new software still won't be able to avoid sand-traps though."

zakkie writes "According to BBC News, Google is to start charging businesses for guaranteed availability and more features in the web apps like Gmail. The article suggests the timing is bad for Microsoft and their release of Office 2007, and is a "shot across their bows"."